General Sir Peter de la Billiere said of the European military that only the French Foreign Legion and the Dutch Marines were worth going to war with. The rest he likened to Cadet forces. Perhaps that is why none of them are war fighting in Afghanistan.

I completely , utterly and totally disagree with the above comments. I'm all for Europe - as a unified whole we WOULD be the most powerful country of earth bar none, with a GDP several billion greater than the USA. People complain about the rules that come down from upon high, but point out one that is truly ridiculous and wrong looking at the whole

We struggle by ourselves, as a whole we can be great once more. Plus, with our wealth we could be a controlling aspect of this new super state.

Not only that, but to say the other european armies are like cadet forces is ridiculous - all of them have traditions at least as long as ours, and are hamstrung by even wore funding than we have (Germans being exception) - don't blame them for not helping more in afghanistan, that's their governments fault governments with more sense than to get dragged into the rampant mission creep that is Herrick.

I'm going to get a lot of stick for this, but I don't care because the sooner people get over the Jingoistic 'us and them' mentality that better lies with the 19th Century (you know, the one the Daily Mail readers still adore and subscribe to) the better, for us and the world.

Does anybody really believe the Germans would give up the right to decide for themselves to not go to war, especially not to an EU which is made up of a majority of states that do/did go into places like Iraq and Southern Afghan?
Stand down... nothing to see...